


A Soft Epilogue

by talesofsymphoniac



Category: The Death Gate Cycle - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 22:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11278179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofsymphoniac/pseuds/talesofsymphoniac
Summary: A look at Haplo, Marit, and Alfred following the events of the books.Or: How much fluff can I stuff into less than 1,500 words?





	A Soft Epilogue

“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.”  
Nikka Ursula, _Seventy Years of Sleep_

* * *

 

Alfred fills their new home with the softest pillows and blankets he can manage.

He is hesitant, at first, to establish himself in their home and in their family: grateful to his friends for their generosity, for allowing him this permanent place in their lives, yet afraid of disturbing whatever delicate balance had inspired it.

But time passes, and he grows more certain of it all, and so he piles his bed with soft blankets, offers more to Haplo and Marit, and leaves the rest in strategic locations throughout the house. He makes himself a nightgown as nice as all the rest, and he sinks into it every night with a contented sigh.

Haplo and Marit tease him for it, just a little. They are used to the hardness of the Labyrinth, would even say they preferred it. Things as frivolous as soft blankets are a luxury, a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.

But then there are the times when Haplo sits on their couch at the end of the day with one of those blankets in his lap, idly running his hands over it while his mind is on other things, and for a moment he remembers the dog, the way its warm fur had felt.

And then there’s later, when they bring Rue home-- not their Rue, too young to be their Rue, but _their_ _Rue_ nonetheless--

Haplo and Marit are wrought with uncertainty. They both want this, they both have wanted this desperately, but how can they not be plagued with doubt after everything that has happened? Marit, especially, is apprehensive, although she is too proud to say so, because it feels ridiculous: _After everything, after surviving the Labyrinth and returning to it, this is what terrifies me?_

But when she and Haplo send their daughter to bed, they wrap her, not in the scratchy, ragged blanket the Squatters had given her a lifetime ago, but in a softness that Rue surely has never known-- Marit hadn’t either, until not so long ago-- and for the first time since Rue crossed the threshold, it feels like it’s going to be okay.

* * *

 

“Thank you, my dear,” Alfred says when Marit helps him up from the ground, not long after Death’s Gate has been closed, and the affectionate term does not seem to surprise her.

“I think we’re more than even by now, Sartan,” she replies, her words lacking any bite they might have once held. Her hand clasps Haplo’s tighter, and Alfred smiles, nods, acknowledges the unpracticed gratitude for what it is.

It strikes Haplo as strange, at first, the ease with which Alfred and Marit interact. He was not there when Marit saved Alfred from the dragon, opening the circle of her being to heal him. He was mostly absent in Abarrach when Alfred had cared for her, saving her life just as he’d saved Haplo’s in those very same catacombs.

It is still a bit unsettled, the relationship between Alfred and Marit. It was founded on an understanding between them, an alliance forged by necessity: something familiar enough to those who had lived in the Labyrinth. Slowly, it has evolved into something else, a tentative sort of fondness by association. Given time, it will only continue to grow. And they have all the time in the world, now.

“Sartan,” Marit calls him, when she doesn’t use his name. It should be impersonal. It had started that way, but now there is no distaste in her inflection, and instead of creating distance, the epithet has the opposite effect.

Sometimes, Marit refers to Haplo as her “husband,” but only in the most lighthearted moments, when the past seems too far away for the word to bring to mind a needle at her forehead and a cold hand at her breast. For the most part, Marit and Haplo are Marit and Haplo to one another, nothing more and nothing less.

Haplo likes it that way: names have never been so meaningful, before. In quiet moments, he says hers gently, slowly, like something precious. A name that he will never forget again, just as his name is never to be alone again.

Of course, no one exemplifies the significance of names like Alfred. Marit knows his true name, now, too, but it is mostly only Haplo who ever uses it. It is a reminder, an encouragement, an acknowledgement, the verbal equivalent of a comforting hand on his shoulder, but most importantly, it’s one more intimacy in a growing list between them, and one that Alfred will always be weak to.

At first, if not his name, Alfred is most likely to call him “friend.” After so much loneliness, their experiences different but equally poignant, the word carries its own weight between them. It’s an endearment that doesn’t quite encompass everything they have become to each other, but then, Haplo thinks, it never really had. There isn’t a word that ever could.

(And then, there is also the time when Alfred, exhausted from research and writing and distracted by the loose piles of paper that refuse to stack neatly in front of him, protests Haplo’s efforts to make him take a break: “A few more minutes, my dear, I’m nearly done.”

It’s what he calls Marit, what he calls the children, and so it takes a few seconds for his brain to catch up to his words. By the time Alfred has dropped the pages and turned redder than Haplo has ever seen him, Haplo has already recovered from the surprise and is fighting to keep a straight face.

He lets Alfred panic silently for a few seconds longer before crossing his arms and speaking with perhaps a bit more smugness than is necessary: “Are you finished, then?”

Alfred gaze shyly flits to Haplo’s face, and whatever he sees there must reassure him; though no less red, he smiles weakly, finishes sorting out his scattered papers, and that is that, another intimacy on the ever-growing list.)

* * *

They all smile more, after everything is over.

When he’s not busy with a Run, or his books, or any number of things, Alfred takes pleasure in the cooking and cleaning, keeping the household steady in time with the happy melody he sings under his breath. This kind of domesticity, so foreign to Haplo and Marit, is nostalgic for him, and he makes it his mission to show the other two how nice it can be.

Out of the three of them, it is easiest to make Alfred smile. It only takes the smallest gestures: a kind word, a brief touch, even just a shared look. It affects Haplo more than he would have ever expected, that smile: lines of apprehension swept away after so long, leaving only the shining of familiar blue eyes in their wake. His genuine smile, free from the self-deprecation and anxiety that had plagued him all this time, seems like a thing that should have been there all along, and there's not a lot Haplo wouldn't do to make sure it stays.

Marit’s smiles are more subtle, secretive things. Often, they are more visible as a flash in her deep brown eyes than in any quirk of her lips: amusement at some private joke, the briefest acknowledgement of the partners at her sides before they rush into the next battle. Sometimes, they are quick twitches of her lips during the children’s lessons, a hint of pride in their successes before she shifts to stern again. In those training sessions, she is demanding, unyielding. The softer expressions of affection are still hard for her, but these most important gifts-- the gifts of survival, of knowledge, of magic-- these, she can give, and she gives them with everything she has.

Of course, sometimes there are real smiles, too, rare and sparkling and beautiful. From the other side of the table, she catches Alfred as he trips on his way to deliver her breakfast plate, raising her eyebrows, and it is the same smile Haplo often sees before Marit pulls him into a kiss: a little teasing, with perhaps a hidden “thank you” there, if you knew how to look for it.

Haplo watches them. The children, who join them quickly, filling the place with activity and change and laughter and even a dog that they pick up along the way. Alfred and Marit, who have chosen this with him, making the good better and the bad bearable and ensuring that he will never be alone again. He watches them all find their place in this new world, in their home, in their family.

He watches them smile, and he smiles back, content.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever have a fic that you work on for a while and you need to take a break from it so you just write a bunch of fluff instead? Like, really just a lot of fluff?
> 
> Anyway, my other Death Gate fic is still happening, it's just taking longer than I thought to push through and do what I need to do for it. If that makes sense. So I thought I'd take another thing I'd already written and post it, in the meantime.


End file.
